The Mutineers Part 37

CHAPTER x.x.xII

"SO ENDS"

Through the watches that followed I pa.s.sed as if everything were unreal; they were like a succession of nightmares, and to this day they are no more than shadows on my memory. Working in silence, the men laid the dead on clean canvas and washed down the decks; cut away wreckage, cleared the running rigging, and replaced with new sails those that had been cut or burned in battle. Then came the new day with its new duties; and a sad day it was for those of us who had stood together through so many hardships, when Neddie Benson went over the side with a prayer to speed him. We were homeward bound with all sail set, but things that actually had happened already seemed incredible, and concerning the future we could only speculate.

We had gone a long way on our journey toward the Cape of Good Hope before our new carpenter had repaired the broken bulwark and the various other damages the ship had suffered, and before the rigging was thoroughly restored. Weeks pa.s.sed, their monotony broken only by the sight of an occasional sail; days piled on end, morning and night, night and morning, until weeks had become months. In the fullness of time we rounded Good Hope, and now swiftly with fair winds, now slowly with foul, we worked up to the equator, then home across the North Atlantic.

On the afternoon of a bright day in the fall, more than a year after we first had set sail, we pa.s.sed Baker Island and stood up Salem Harbor.

Bleak and bare though they were, the rough, rocky sh.o.r.es were home. To those of us who hailed from Salem, every roof and tree gave welcome after an absence of eighteen months. Already, we knew, reports of our approach would have spread far and wide. Probably a dozen good old captains, sweeping the sea, each with his gla.s.s on his "captain's walk," had sighted our topsails while we were hull down and had cried out that Joseph Whidden was home again. Such was the penetration of seafaring men in those good old days when they recognized a ship and its master while as yet they could spy nothing more than topgallantsails.

We could see the people gathering along the sh.o.r.e and lining the wharf and calling and cheering and waving hands. We thought of our comrades whom we had left in far seas; we longed and feared to ask a thousand questions about those at home, of whom we had thought so tenderly and so often.

Already boats were putting out to greet us; and now, in the foremost of them, one of the younger Websters stood up. "Mr. Hamlin, ahoy!" he called, seeing Roger on the quarter-deck. "Where is Captain Whidden?"

Roger did not answer until the boat had come fairly close under the rail, and meanwhile young Webster stood looking up at him as if more than half expecting bad news.

Only when the boat was so near that each could see the other's expression and hear every inflection of the other's voice, did Roger reply.

"He is dead."

"We heard a story," young Webster cried in great excitement, coming briskly aboard. "One Captain Craigie, brig Eve late from Bencoolen, brought it. An appalling tale of murder and mutiny. As he had it, the men mutinied against Mr. Thomas and against Mr. Falk when he a.s.sumed command. They seized the ship and killed Mr. Thomas and marooned Mr. Falk, who, while Captain Craigie was thereabouts, hustled a crew of fire-eating Malays and white adventurers and bought a dozen barrels of powder and set sail with a fleet of junks to retake the ship. But that, of course, is stuff and nonsense.

Where's Falk?"

"Falk," said Roger with a wry smile, "decided to spend the rest of his days at the Straits."

"Oh!" Young Webster looked hard at Roger and then looked around the deck.

All was ship-shape, but there were many strange faces.

"Oh," he said again. "And you--" He stopped short.

"And I?" Roger repeated.

Again young Webster looked around the ship. He bit his lip. "What is _your_ story, Mr. Hamlin?" he said sharply.

"Is your father here, Mr. Webster?" Roger asked.

"No," the young man replied stiffly, "he is at Newburyport, but I have no doubt whatsoever that he will return at once when he hears you have arrived. This seems to be a strange situation, Mr. Hamlin. Who is in command here?"

"I am, sir."

"Oh!" After a time he added, "I heard rumors, but I refused to credit them."

"What do you mean by that, sir?" Roger asked.

"Oh, nothing much, sir. You evaded my question. What is _your_ story?"

"_My_ story?" Roger looked him squarely in the eye. In Roger's own eyes there was the glint of his old humorous twinkle, and I knew that the young man's bustling self-importance amused him.

"My story?" Roger repeated. "Why, such a story as I have to tell, I'll tell your father when I report to him."

Young Webster reddened. "Oh!" he said with a sarcastic turn of his voice.

"Stuff and nonsense! It may be--or it may not." And with that he stationed himself by the rail and said no more.

When at last we had come to anchor and young Webster had gone hastily ash.o.r.e and we had exchanged greetings at a distance with a number of acquaintances, Roger and Mr. Cledd and I sat down--perhaps more promptly than need be--over our accounts in the great cabin. I felt bitterly disappointed that none of my own people had come to welcome me; but realizing how silly it was to think that they surely must know of our arrival, I jumped at Roger's suggestion that we gather up our various doc.u.ments and then leave Mr. Cledd in charge--he was not a Salem man--and hurry home as fast as we could go.

As we bent to our work, Mr. Cledd remarked with a dry smile, "I'm thinking, sir, there's going to be more of a sting to this pirate-and-mutiny business than I'd believed. That smug, sarcastic young man means trouble or I've no eye for weather."

"He's the worst of all the Websters," Roger replied thoughtfully. "And I'll confess that Captain Craigie's story knocks the wind out of _my_ canvas.

Who'd have looked for a garbled story of our misfortunes to outsail us?

However,--" he shook his head and brushed away all such anxieties,--"time will tell. Now, gentlemen, to our accounts."

Before we had more than got well started, I heard a voice on deck that brought me to my feet.

There was a step on the companionway, and then, "Father!" I cried, and leaped up with an eagerness that, boy-like, I thought I concealed with painstaking dignity when I shook his hand.

"Come, come, come, you young rascals!" my father cried. "What's the meaning of this? First hour in the home port and you are as busy at your books as if you were old students like myself. Come, put by your big books and your ledgers, lads. Roger, much as I hate to have to break bad news, your family are all in Boston, so--more joy to us!--there's nothing left but you shall come straight home with Benny here. Unless, that is--" my father's eyes twinkled just as Roger's sometimes did--"unless you've more urgent business elsewhere."

"I thank you, sir," said Roger, "but I have _no_ more urgent business, and I shall be--well, delighted doesn't half express it."

His manner was collected enough, but at my father's smile he reddened and his own eyes danced.

"Pack away your books and come along, then. There's some one will be glad to see you besides Benny's mother. Leave work till morning. I'll wager come sun-up you'll be glad enough to get to your tasks if you've had a little home life meanwhile. Come, lads, come."

Almost before we fully could realize what it meant, we were walking up to the door of my own home, and there was my mother standing on the threshold, and my sister, her face as pink now as it had been white on the day long ago when she had heard that Roger was to sail as supercargo.

Many times more embarra.s.sed than Roger, whom I never had suspected of such shamelessness, I promptly turned my back on him and my sister; where upon my father laughed aloud and drew me into the house. From the hall I saw the dining-table laid with our grandest silver, and, over all, the towering candle-sticks that were brought forth only on state occasions.

"And now, lads," said my father, when we sat before such a meal as only returning prodigals can know, "what's this tale of mutiny and piracy with which the town's been buzzing these two weeks past? Trash, of course."

"Why, sir, I think we've done the right thing," said Roger, "and yet I can't say that it's trash."

When my father had heard the story he said so little that he frightened me; and my mother and sister exchanged anxious glances.

"Of course," Roger added, "we are convinced absolutely, and if that fellow hadn't got away at Whampoa, we'd have proof of Kipping's part in it--"

"But he got away," my father interposed, "and I question if his word is good for much, in any event. Poor Joseph Whidden! We were boys together."

He shortly left the table, and a shadow seemed to have fallen over us. We ate in silence, and after supper Roger and my sister went into the garden together. What, I wondered, was to become of us now?

That night I dreamed of courts and judges and goodness knows what penalties of the law, and woke, and dreamed again, and slept uneasily until the unaccustomed sound of some one pounding on our street door waked me in the early morning.

After a time a servant answered the loudly repeated summons. Low voices followed, then I heard my father open his own door and go out into the hall.

"Is that you, Tom Webster?" he called.